Page 36 of Master of Lies

Yesterday’s attack at the Dew Drop parking lot filled my mind, in full sensory detail, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I hurried to the front door. “Hey! James!”

Jed turned, frowning. “Get back inside, Sandee.”

“Your thingie is, um, beeping? And I saw cars on the road in one of the viewscreens. Two big black SUVs.”

Jed shut the Jeep and ran back to the house, straight toward the monitor. A new alarm beeped. The SUVs were passing another sensor. “Fuck me,” he muttered.

“Who is that?” My voice went up into a panicked squeak, and I wasn’t even faking it.

“Yesterday’s assholes, taking another shot at us. How they found us, I don’t know. Nobody saw us go, nobody followed us, nobody could have tagged the Jeep. Nobody knew about this place but me and my team.”

My teeth were starting to chatter and my vision went dark, as if I were flat on my back in the snow again, with that huge guy crushing me, bleeding all over me.

Goddamnit, Masters. Pull yourself together.I took a deep breath, gulped. “So shouldn’t we just, um…leave?”

“In the Jeep, you mean? Sure, if we want to meet them head on.”

“We can’t drive the other direction?”

“There is no other direction. This the end of the road. After this, it’s just a logging track that peters out into nothing. The only other way out of here is a thirty-mile hike over rough country, in thigh-deep snow. And it’s below zero out there.”

“So…shouldn’t we get started?”

Jed looked me up and down, a sharp, appraising look. “No,” he said flatly. “I saw six people. They’ll be heavily armed. They would run us down. I need to choose my ground, thin them out. And leave at least one of them alive to interrogate.”

Something hard and implacable in his eyes chilled me to the bone.

“I think we should just run,” I offered. “Like, right now. As fast as we can.”

He shook his head. “We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and we don’t have enough lead time. I could do it alone, maybe. But not with you.”

My chin went up. “I am not a weakling,” I told him. “I can move fast.”

He shook his head. “We’ve only got a few minutes, so don’t waste my time. Get this on.” He pulled a dark green winter coat off a hook and tossed it at me.

I caught it. The only thing I could do to help was to not be a pain in his ass, so I put it on and zipped it up. It hung to my knees. Way too big, but I had several layers on my top half, so it didn’t slide around too much.

Jed rattled around in the kitchen, shoving various things into a knapsack. He slung it onto his back, grabbed a coil of rope out of a box, and took me by the arm.

“Where are we going to—”

“Shut up and hurry.” Jed dragged me out the door, pulling me off my feet.

I scurried to get my feet under myself. “Hey! Dude! Slow down!”

“Listen up,” he said. “We’re going toward that tree, the twisted one near the edge of the canyon, but we can’t leave any footprints. So stay on the rocks, where the snow’s been blown off. Don’t leave tracks in the snow. Understand?”

I nodded. It was more or less what I’d done when I made the phone call.

“You said you were fast,” he said. “Show me. Put your feet where I put my feet.”

I followed him, leaping from exposed rock to exposed rock. The wind was still whistling, blowing the snow that was as fine and dry as dust.

Jed slowed when he got to the twisted tree. He slid the coil of rope off his arm, looping it swiftly around the bottom of the tree, knotting it securely. What the hell…?

“James?” I said carefully. “Ah…what are you doing with that rope?”

“I can’t have you with me when I’m hunting them.” His voice was cold and distant. “You’ll slow me down, make noise. You’ll make me into a target.”

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